Many people who have Wordpress blogs or websites that are created using Wordpress will often get notifications or emails telling them that they have a ping back. But what is a ping back and how should you handle them?
When Wordpress was first created, the developers added a feature called a ping back that notified webmasters when another website or blog linked back to an article on their website. This was great back in the days when reciprocal links were a big deal and really helped your site popularity. But today the searches engines don’t treat reciprocal links with the same weight as they once did. Now it all about natural One Way Links. Don’t get me wrong reciprocal links aren’t totally bad but you should limit the amount of reciprocal linking you are doing in the promotion of your website.
So what do you you do when you get a ping back?
Like most people who receive a ping back, you’re excited that someone has linked to your article or blog. Your first instinct is to accept the ping back and allow the comment to be posted on your blog. But, the danger here is that when you accept a ping back, Wordpress will add a comment on the post that was linked to and a reciprocal link is created.
In most cases you DO NOT want to approve a ping back. There are exceptions to this of course, especially when you actually know the person who is linking to you and you WANT to send link juice their way. But, for the most part, accepting a ping back only causes your article or blog to loose link juice.
What are you thoughts about ping backs? Do you agree? Let me know your opinion. Its comments like yours that make website come alive.
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This is useful thanks, I did wonder why ping backs existed.